Wednesday, October 1, 2003

And in other news ...

According to Laura Groppe, CEO of the California-based Girls Intelligence Agency, there are more girls than boys online in North America, girls spend more time online than boys, and forty per cent of online game players are girls. Yet the video game industry is dominated by games-makers who are men. And as Groppe explains, this limits development of girl-friendly games: "It just kind of doesn't occur to them that there could be 'play patterns' mixed into what they're doing," she says. "The games that are the fighting games, the adventure games that have some sort of action in them - that's not alienating as a play pattern to girls. Where the alienation comes in is the characters. The [girl] characters are very buxom and scantily clad, and most of the time they are bystanders that don't have much to do with the story."

and TeleTaxi - Canada's first site-specific interactive art exhibition in a taxicab - "Each taxi system also includes GPS (Global Positioning System) technology, which allows the displayed artwork to change depending on where the taxi is in the city."

I was skeptical of the quote at the top of this post and still posted it without comment. I hassle people who use (what strike me as suspicious) marketing stats, but as soon as the numbers served my interests, I was willing to put aside my skepticism. That's disgusting. Shame on me for being such a hypocrite!

Seriously though, who the hell *is* the Girls Intelligence Agency? Their idea of research creeps me right out. Granted, being creeped out is hardly an intellectual position, but I could muster a defense somehow related to oppressive gender politics and consumption (did you see their client list?). But then again, I have no real reason to doubt it. It certainly sounds probable. And it is interesting. So there you go. (If you know of other research on this, please let me know.)